Turkey Book Talk

Turkey Book Talk #280 – Nefise Kahraman discusses Translation Attached, which brings lesser known Ottoman and Turkish literary gems to an English-reading audience.  The conversation also addresses Translation Attached’s seventh book, “Beneath the Handkerchief, and Other Tales”, a volume of 25 humorous and socially observant short stories by the late author and diplomat Memduh Sevket […...

Turkey Book Talk #279 – Dimitar Bechev, Director of the Dahrendorf Programme at St Antony’s College, University Oxford and Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe, on “The Scramble for Europe: Russia, China, and Turkey Challenging Regional Order” (Oxford University Press) The book questions whether Turkey can be placed alongside Russia and China as a direct competitor […]

Turkey Book Talk #278 – Marc Sinan Winrow, post-doctoral research assistant at the London School of Economics, on “Turkey and the Liberal International Order: Hegemony, Contestation and the Politics of Articulation Since 1919” (Agenda Publishing, Edinburgh University Press) The conversation addresses Turkey’s position on the edge of the Western-led international order over the past cen...

Turkey Book Talk #277 – Benjamin Fortna, professor of history at the University of Arizona, on “The Shortest History of Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic” (Old Street Publishing) In just over 200 pages, the book spans the emergence of the Ottoman Empire to the present day. The interview addresses the challenges of trying to […]

Turkey Book Talk #276 – Işılay Gürsu, assistant director at the British Institute in Ankara, on “Public Dialogues in Archaeology: New Methodologies from Turkey” (Bloomsbury Academic).  The book explores the Turkish public’s views of the country’s rich archaeological heritage, the hunt for hidden treasure at historic sites across the country, and efforts to repatriate ancient [&#8...

Turkey Book Talk #275 – Onur İnal of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna on “Gateway to the Mediterranean: An Environmental History of Late Ottoman Izmir” (Cambridge University Press). The book describes how the cosmopolitan coastal city of Izmir, often known in Europe at the time as Smyrna, flourished in […]

Turkey Book Talk #274 – Sinem Adar, head of the Centre for Applied Turkey Studies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, returns to the podcast. The conversation takes stock of Turkey’s international profile and domestic political trajectory after its recent hosting of the NATO summit in Ankara. Download the episode or listen below: […]

Turkey Book Talk #273 – Hannah Lucinda Smith on “Hinterlands: Journeys through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers” (Profile Books). The book is based on vivid reporting from Eastern Europe, the East Mediterranean and the Caucasus, as places like Kosovo, Bosnia, Karabakh, Transnistria, Crimea and Cyprus become geopolitical hotspots with ambitious revisionist powers like Russia and Turkey looking [...

Turkey Book Talk #272 – Doruk Erhan, doctoral candidate at Yale Law School and visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, on the crackdown on Turkey’s main opposition CHP. The conversation is based on Doruk’s recent articles for the Verfassungsblog, including his recent assessment of the legal and political […]

Turkey Book Talk #271 – Long-time Istanbul-based journalist Jennifer Hattam on her work updating the Lonely Planet travel guide to Turkey. The conversation touches on the immense amount of work and miles that go into updating the guide, her impressions of the many places she has visited over the years, and how Turkey has changed […]

Turkey Book Talk #270 – Brett Wilson, associate professor of history and public policy at Central European University, on his article “Sufi Leaders in the early Turkish Republic: Profession, Privilege, and Persecution (1925-1950)”, published in the latest edition of New Perspectives on Turkey. The piece studies the impact of Turkey’s 1925 outlawing of Islamic religious [&#8...

Turkey Book Talk #269 – Journalist Suzy Hansen on “From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) The book focuses on Istanbul’s Karagumruk neighbourhood to explore the everyday impact of geopolitical upheaval, economic turbulence and the arrival of Syrian migrants in Turkey. Download the episode or listen […]

Turkey Book Talk #268 – Faisal Devji, professor of global and imperial history at Balliol College, Oxford, on “Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam” (Yale University Press) The book argues that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Islam stopped being primarily a religious movement focused on scripture and the divine, […]

Turkey Book Talk #267 – Ryan Gingeras, historian at the Naval Postgraduate School in California and author of “Mafia: A Global History” (Simon & Schuster) and “Heroin, Organized Crime, and the Making of Modern Turkey” (Oxford University Press), returns to the podcast. The conversation discusses the influence of criminal organisations in Turkey’s political and economic […]

Turkey Book Talk #266 – Mustafa Aksakal, associate professor of history at Georgetown University, on “The War that Made the Middle East: World War I and the End of the Ottoman Empire” (Princeton University Press) The book gives a revisionist take on the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution, suggesting it was not a foregone conclusion and alternative […]

Turkey Book Talk #265 – Michelle Lynn Kahn, associate professor of modern European history at the University of Richmond, on “Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration and Turkish-German History” (Cambridge University Press). Migration from Turkey largely started with West Germany’s “guest worker” scheme, introduced in 1961. Since the 1970s, Turks have been Germany’s largest [&#8230...

Turkey Book Talk #264 – Murat Yıldız, associate professor of history at Skidmore College, on “The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul” (University of Texas Press) The book examines the emergence of sports culture in late Ottoman Istanbul and its implications for developing ideas of modernisation, imperial identity, […]